Round 4 - Knockhill - Angus Whiteside

After a short summer break, Toro Verde GT returned to action as it headed north to Knockhill in Scotland, for rounds seven and eight of the Porsche Carrera Cup GB at the weekend (July 30/31).

After joining the team at Oulton Park, Scottish racer Ross Wylie was welcomed back to compete on home soil in the Slot Masters-backed Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car. To begin the busy weekend schedule, two free practice sessions were held on Friday, with the team feeling optimistic. The mood quickly changed as an incident during the first period, where Ross took contact, meant he was flipped upside down, causing irreparable damage to the car and taking him out of contention for the weekend. However, in a testament to the camaraderie in the paddock, he was able to race as Team Parker Racing loaned the use of Justin Sherwood’s car in his absence.

With only three tenths splitting the fastest ten cars, qualifying around the unforgiving 1.3-mile circuit would make all the difference. Unfortunately for Pro-Am competitor Angus Whiteside, the disjointed session meant he was unable to get up to speed, finishing seventh in class. Further down the field it was a different story for Peter Kyle-Henney, who was pleased with the performance of the car, and went third fastest in Am. Getting to grips with a new car, Ross was tentative, but still managed to qualify eleventh, with team-mate Jake Giddings just up ahead in tenth.

Race one began with a big incident as Redline Racing’s Matthew Graham stalled off the line, with a subsequent pile up forcing a further four cars to retire. With a significantly smaller grid, the race eventually restarted with a busy opening lap before the cars and drivers began to settle down. Jake and Ross gained one place each as they crossed the line ninth and tenth respectively, while Angus got busy as he looked to take advantage of the smaller Pro-Am field, and charged into third place to take his first podium in the championship. Peter was on the hunt to overtake Team Parker Racing’s guest driver Dominique Bastien, managing to make the move stick at the hairpin, and crossing the line third in class.

With a significantly calmer start to race two, all four drivers made decent starts and maintained positions. Ross came under attack from Nathan Harrison who was piling on the pressure to take tenth place, running only 0.2 seconds behind. The Scottish driver put in a great defensive drive to hold him off, but couldn’t manage to close the gap to Jake up ahead, with the pair taking the flag ninth and tenth for the second time.

Angus found himself in a fight with the Pro class cars, and although unable to gain any further positions, crossed the line third of the Pro-Ams, bringing home a second podium appearance and more silverware. With sights set on nearest rival Nigel Rice, Peter was able to close the gap and sneak past on the inside of the hairpin, where it was smooth sailing from then onwards. Taking his season best finish of second in the Am class, he found himself back on the podium to round off a successful weekend for the team.

Angus Added - “Qualifying was terrible. I was overthinking, put too much pressure on myself, and was trying too hard from the beginning. Everyone was trying to come up behind me or get past me on their warmup laps, so I had no flow to the session. Every time I got to a lap, something happened or someone had gone off.

“Race one turned out great, but I got away terribly on the restart. I had a bit of wheelspin, which let Peter Kyle-Henney and Nigel Rice past, but they were under the Yellow Flag because of the mayhem going on in front. A lot of the Pro-Ams were out, so I decided to just go for it and see what we could do. I managed to make it past two guys in one lap, but my tyres were getting too hot and by the end of the race I had a lot of oversteer. I got my first podium, and even though I wanted it to be under circumstances of destroying all the opposition, I'll take it.

“It's pretty hard to overtake here, so I was happy that I managed to stay with the pack in race two. I had Jake, Ross, and Nathan [Harrison] just in front of me, so I was happy to have the Pros in the mix as well. There were a few of the other Pro-Ams behind me who have beat me in the past, so it was pretty sweet to be in that position. My girlfriend told me she had a good feeling about this weekend, which I had doubted after qualifying, but it worked out pretty well.”